Old story of ploughing mulberry: 14. Planting green hemp

Hemp crops are rarely planted in Guanzhong area, and even less in the upper reaches of Fenghe River Basin. But I planted it in my memory; The locals call it Qingma.

Green ramie, also known as ramie or ramie, is the most common and common hemp crop growing in temperate regions. Flax planting conditions are high and rare in temperate regions; Sisal is produced in the tropics.

Green hemp planting has a long history, at least in the late Western Zhou Dynasty. In ancient China, it was the main way to solve the clothing problem by planting hemp and twisting rope by using its fiber spinning performance.

Part of the rope twisted by hemp rope is used to make shoes and hats, such as Ma Xie and headrope in early ancient times; The other part is used for production activities: for example, ropes used to pull and bind buildings and ships.

There is a saying in The Book of Songs: If the performance is not good, the city will crumble.

The meaning of this poem is: a beautiful rural girl put down her work of spinning hemp thread and ran to the market to watch the excitement and dance. As can be seen from this poem, linen textile was the housework of the people in the pre-Qin period.

In ancient poetry books, people call it linen or cloth clothes because of the characteristics of their clothes. The working people at the bottom can only wear cheap linen clothes or cotton cloth; Da Jia, an upper-class dignitary and businessman, wears fine silk; None of them are silkworm farmers.

Special note: people who wear linen at the bottom have low status. From this point of view, the scholars who sought officials in Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties also wore linen to show their modesty. At the same time, linen evolved into mourning clothes, showing respect for the dead.

In the upper reaches of the Fenghe River basin, the green hemp fields and reed fields we saw when we were young were not very big or too many. At most, it is five or six acres or seven or eight acres. Reed is a gramineous crop, which is used to weave and make mats. Mat bag is a cylindrical agricultural tool woven with reeds, which is used to store grain.

Second, planting cannabis and retting

Green hemp is a common and common hemp crop. Species are everywhere except the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The wild green hemp along the river and roadside is relatively low, about one meter high. The artificially cultivated green hemp grows very tall, about two meters high.

The quality of the land for planting green hemp is not limited, and the technology is not too high. Before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, we began to dig the ground and sow, and then we had to raise and fix the seedlings. Nothing more than ordinary farming, weeding, irrigation, pest control and fertilization.

About two months later, the green hemp grows tall and blooms; At the top of the cannabis plant, it will branch and bear several hemispherical fruits. Each fruit consists of many flat petals; Outside the top of each petal, fruit thorns grow, which are evenly distributed at the outer end of the fruit; In the valve, if Gan Qing hemp seeds are sandwiched.

Green hemp seeds, slightly two or three times larger than sesame seeds, are white before maturity and purple-black after maturity. The white and green hemp seeds that are about to mature can be eaten; The locals said: green hemp bone buds. But the planted green hemp is not allowed to eat green hemp bone buds; At that time, the team will send someone to guard it.

At the end of July, around the heat, the green hemp was mature and ready for harvesting. Locals call marijuana harvesting: chopping or killing marijuana. Hemp cutting is a special sickle called hemp sickle. The blade is narrow and long, and the tip is slightly curved. Cut down the green hemp and cut off the fruit at the top of the tree. Then tie up the hemp plants, and then proceed to the next process: retting hemp.

In the era of production team, there were big pits and green manure; It can also be used for retting hemp. The young people in the team pulled the hemp bundles in the field to the composting pool, threw them down and piled them up layer by layer; The water in the compost pond overflowed.

When the pool is almost full, use farm tools such as door panels, long boards in the feeding room and chopsticks of the production team to hold down the hemp bundles; On top of these wooden products, a small wheelbarrow and a big stone are pressed, so that the hemp bag can be completely immersed in the water.

Retting hemp has three major functions: first, bacteria propagated in water can separate hemp skin from hemp plants; Therefore, retting process is also called degumming.

Secondly, hot weather and intense fermentation completely decompose the epidermis of marijuana; Separate hemp fiber. Thirdly, the process of retting hemp is also to rinse the fiber to obtain soft hemp fiber.

Retting should be completed around the heat, and the time is two or three days. Otherwise, in the autumn season, the coolness in the water is not conducive to bacterial reproduction, which in turn affects the quality of hemp fiber.

Third, twist the rope and weave sacks.

The cooked hemp skin will basically fall off from the hemp plant naturally; After artificial peeling, hemp can be obtained. This process is called peeling hemp. However, the hemp yarn stripped at first is still relatively wide, and the fibers stick together. Therefore, the next process is: anesthesia.

When rowing hemp, the two men grabbed both ends of the hemp skin and tore it into filaments according to the grain of the fiber. In the era of the production team, the peeled hemp skin was distributed to each household according to the weight. When the hemp skin was shaved, each household took time to make it at their own home. The remaining hemp heads and scraps were collected and sold to paper mills. The remaining hemp stalks were distributed to households as firewood.

The bone buds of green hemp cut from the top of hemp stem can be dried to obtain purple-black green hemp seeds, which can be used for oil extraction.

Before vegetable oil was popularized in northern rural areas, local people had been eating cottonseed oil. Because there are not many green cannabis plants, green cannabis seed oil is rarely eaten and the taste has been forgotten; But I'm sure I have.

Pull the hemp yarn, and then twist the rope with the rope car.

Rope car is a kind of rotatable hand-twisted rope farm tool, which has two kinds: hand-operated and pedal. When I was a child, I saw a small rope cart with a hand, just like a small bamboo fan now. The outline and shape are basically the same.

Hand-held small rope cart, exquisite wooden handle, a small iron bar about 20 cm long and the thickness of chopsticks; This small iron bar is the shaft of the cable car.

On the small iron shaft, there is a small rotatable movable wooden frame about equal to a flat trapezoid; The small wooden frame is the frame of the small rope car; The general shape is approximately equal to the flat trapezoidal "eye".

As shown below: This is an iron trolley; But the wooden luggage case I remember is more exquisite than this.

Want to know what the wooden handcart looks like, use your imagination. I'm very sorry: my limited pen power can't accurately describe the wisdom of ancient craftsmen in China, so I have to make such a simple metaphor and outline. I want to thank them first.

Each household twisted the hemp rope, then handed it in, and the team handed it over to the factory that made farm tools in exchange for fiber rope and hemp bag. The fiber rope used in local rural production is coarse hemp rope, which is twisted with multiple strands of fine hemp rope.

Hemp bags, also called sacks, are bags for grain; There are long strips and cylinders. Later, grain was bagged with chemical fertilizer, and sacks were rarely used in rural areas.

General fiber rope, about one centimeter in diameter, is used as the brake rope for family shelf cars. A thick rope is usually used to trap animals. Naturally, there are thicker ones, which are used to set brake ropes for cars and brake cars.

Ancient China people may wear linen and Ma Xie; Linen and hemp rope have been useless in life since cotton was planted. However, handmade cloth shoes, soles, but also use fine hemp rope.

In Ma Xie at that time, few people wore them. I wore them when I was a child. Ma Xie's strange clothes with little red tassels on his toes are fresh for little boys. After the appearance of fiber materials, sports shoes and leather shoes, these pure hemp things are very few.

In the early 1980s, I watched Hong Kong TV dramas and foreign movies, and saw clothes worn by Hong Kong people and foreigners. Rural people joked that Hong Kong people and foreigners are still so pitiful, and they still wear clothes made of sacks.

Of course I know now, it's a woolen suit; It has nothing to do with the linen worn by ancient people in China, and the hemp rope and sacks used later.

Chronicle of Caocun Industry of Tang Dou Prodigal Son: Sang Ma Cotton